First Meeting 2

"Hello. I'm Li Che, leader of the Special Investigation Team."

"Hello, hello. I'm the one, uh, assigned to assist the Special Investigation Team from L City, Zhang Huaiyu." Shaking hands for the second time that day, Zhang Huaiyu was a bit nervous. The legendary team leader before him, the renowned "Master Detective" he'd heard vaguely about, wasn't at all the fearsome, half-century-old stereotype one might imagine. Quite the opposite. Li Che looked to be around thirty, with a neat, refined appearance. If anything, he seemed more like an office-bound civil servant, though in a southern city like L City, his height gave him an edge, roughly matching that of the deputy team leader from earlier.

That nervousness mostly came from an overwhelming presence Li Che exuded, not aimed at him personally, but like a city gate set on fire, the disaster spilling over to the fish in the moat, making him tread cautiously. Even someone with a bit of a rogue streak like Nian Jueming was now buried in studying "this infinity is way too infinite," and Zhang Huaiyu felt compelled to find something to do immediately. "Is there anything else I can help with?"

"My work here is basically wrapped up. Since you just arrived not long ago, take another close look at the scene."

"Understood. I'll get right to it."

*

The abandoned factory at the scene consisted of two buildings, east and west, positioned to support each other. From the structure, both were four stories high, with floors about four meters apart, previously a small light industrial product processing plant. Abandoned for three years, it was now "open to the north and south," with all equipment removed and only load-bearing walls left. Zhang Huaiyu climbed the stairs to the second floor and looked down over the railing to see where the victim lay.

Naturally, he chose to look straight up immediately. Given where the victim was positioned, the assumption of a fatal fall came naturally, yet the railing here on the second floor bore no marks whatsoever. Thus, one could infer that the victim might have fallen from higher up. Looking up, he saw obvious damage along the edge of the top floor's concrete slab, with bent rebar exposed to the air.

As for the debris and dust falling from the damaged slab, he could probably only discern its shape from scene photos. Continuing up the zigzag staircase to the fourth floor, he couldn't step directly onto the top slab, the stairs to the rooftop were on the other side. Reaching the damaged edge of the top slab, Zhang Huaiyu more or less understood why Li Che had been able to wrap up so quickly.

The concrete of the slab had fresh fracture marks, pale in color. Though rain had washed over it, sharp angles were still visible. And the exposed rebar, which should have been encased in concrete not long ago, showed signs of rust, likely tampered with.

Coming down from the top floor to the third, Zhang Huaiyu turned to look at the corner room by the stairwell on the third floor. That was the "fire origin point" handled by the fire department. Even from here, the blackened walls were visible.

"Done looking around? Zhang Huaiyu, right? Time to head back!"

It was Nian Jueming, the Deputy Team Leader from earlier, shouting at the top of his lungs from downstairs.

"Coming down now."

"Your team did a good job preserving the crime scene." As soon as he got downstairs, Zhang Huaiyu heard a word of praise from the team leader. This made him nod repeatedly in agreement: "I took a look at the top floor slab just now, the marks are quite distinct. I assume photos and samples of the fractured concrete rubble have been preserved and weren't contaminated by the rain."

"Mm, I've already verified that. Let's head back first."

"Okay, sure."

"Oh, one more thing." Li Che suddenly called him back. Zhang Huaiyu stopped and turned, only to see Li Che's expression dead serious: "You still get off work eventually."

"...Oh."

On the ride back, Zhang Huaiyu deliberated for several minutes before finally blurting out:

"Team Leader, there should be other people in our team, right?"

After all, he hadn't yet seen the person from that file...

"Yeah," Nian Jueming, who was driving, replied. "There are two others. They went back first."

"Went... back first?" That didn't sound quite like the team leader's style.

"Yeah, back to the bureau first. The Doctor said he had a hypothesis and rushed back to check the body transported to the forensics room. Feifei drove him."

"I'm telling you, that definitely counts as driving under fatigue..." Catching a glare from beside him, Nian Jueming hastily retracted his sharp commentary.

"The Doctor is..."

Zhang Huaiyu's heart began to pound wildly, as if the truth were sprinting full speed toward him. He felt inexplicably nervous, yet terrified of hearing the answer, knowing that whatever came next would deliver a final verdict on his absurd suspicion.

"Dr. Zhou Ping. He just returned from studying abroad last year and serves as our team's forensic doctor. Right after returning to join forensic work, he assisted in solving several cases. He's very capable."

Not a single detail matched. Wonderful, his dangling heart had finally dropped dead. Zhang Huaiyu let out a self-deprecating chuckle. Right, what else had he been expecting to hear? Oh, Dr. Zhou Ping, took a casual ten-year break being dead and just resurrected last year?

*

Back at the municipal bureau, there were inevitable formalities and small talk. Afterward, Zhang Huaiyu finally met that "Feifei", Jin Fei. Unlike his imagination, she was a pretty "normal" young woman,  at least more normal than the other two. This female officer had a neat, short haircut, wasn't very tall, and though her round face and big eyes made her look young, she somehow gave off the vibe that she could handle herself in a fight. When he first saw her, she was dozing in the newly cleaned-out Special Investigation Team office, startled upright by the door opening. She reported that the Doctor was still in the forensics room and hadn't returned yet.

Zhang Huaiyu had hoped to see him face-to-face, so he felt a bit disappointed. But his newly dead heart was suspended once more. He still hadn't met Dr. Zhou Ping in person, he didn't know if he truly looked that much like Zhou Qinhe. Still, not meeting him right away was fine, it was like granting another stay of execution to his ridiculous speculation.

"Alright, let's organize the materials first. We need to share the information we have with Comrade Zhang Huaiyu, newly arrived from L City, call him Xiao Zhang for short."

Li Che slapped the file folder onto the table.

"I'll boil some water." Nian Jueming, who had just settled into his chair, sprang up again.

"My brother just sent these. Everyone have some to tide us over." Jin Fei handed out some boxed snacks, fine pastries, upon opening.

"Alright. You talk and I'll take notes to catch up." Zhang Huaiyu pulled out his laptop.

"Hey, kid, didn't see that coming. Where'd you pull that laptop from? Show me again!" Nian Jueming, who had gone to boil water, poked his head back in.

"For this case, after seeing the scene, you probably have a rough picture. We'll wait for Dr. Zhou Ping's tests and confirmation before analyzing together. Let me first brief Xiao Zhang on the details of the previous two cases."

"Do you have any insights?" Li Che finished presenting the info and asked Zhang Huaiyu, who had been silent for a while.

"Uh, let me sort it out." Zhang Huaiyu took a deep breath.

He had vaguely heard about the first case. Essentially a traffic accident: one party died on the spot, the other was seriously injured and rushed to the hospital. Lucky for them, while the police were handling it as an accident, a Master Detective on his way back to H City, stuck on the bridge because of the incident, none other than Team Leader Li Che, judging from the road conditions, tire marks, and scattered parts, directly pointed out that the perpetrator had committed premeditated murder, not a simple accident. Once the case escalated to a criminal investigation, within half a day, evidence was complete, and the perpetrator died from injuries at the hospital.

The second case was something he had experienced firsthand. Armed robbery and murder in broad daylight was a serious crime in L City. After receiving citizen reports, Zhang Huaiyu, as a member of the Criminal Investigation Detachment, rushed to the scene. Through on-site investigation and surveillance footage from surrounding roads, he quickly determined the direction the fleeing suspect had taken. After sealing off the southern market, they soon found the suspect and the weapon. The case was solved the same day it happened, anyone would say the bureau deserved a commendation.

"These two cases..." Zhang Huaiyu asked with difficulty, "were both... crimes of passion?"

One was deep-seated resentment combined with road rage, the other was a mugging-murder where the victim turned out to be the killer's ex-girlfriend.

"In terms of nature, yes."

"And the killers have both been caught."

"In terms of outcome, that's correct."

"So both of these cases are solved, right?"

"In terms of investigative procedure, you could say that."

"Then," Zhang Huaiyu asked with genuine confusion, pushing off the table to stand up, "the reason for consolidating these cases and establishing the Special Investigation Team alongside today's Cui Hua case is that different forms of the Infinity Symbol appeared at all these crime scenes?"

"Yeah, isn't that strange?" Jin Fei widened her round eyes in a "what else could it be" look.

"Isn't that a bit hasty, a bit... forced? I mean-" Zhang Huaiyu pulled up the "infinity symbol" from the first case, a piece of debris from among the scattered parts of the half-crushed car at the scene. It was a metal ornament shaped like an infinity symbol that had fallen off. "This is pretty common. It might just be the car owner's personal taste, placed on the dashboard." Next, he pulled up the image of the "Infinity Symbol" from the second case. "This one is even more normal. It's a luxury backpack found near the killer, and its logo design just happens to be shaped like an infinity symbol. Plus, the backpack is expensive, if a robber wants money, targeting someone with a high-end bag makes complete sense." He drew his final conclusion: "I really don't understand why these cases are consolidated."

In contrast, the infinity symbol spray-painted on the wall at today's Cui Hua scene felt more deliberate.

"You asked a question earlier." Li Che bypassed his query. "You asked if the killers were all caught. Let me revise the answer: the killers were all found, because they're all dead."

Zhang Huaiyu was momentarily speechless and sat back down. He knew the robbery killer was also dead, during the arrest, he was sealing off the killer's escape route on a side street and learned that when cornered, the robber decisively slit his own throat with the weapon.

"There's one more thing." Jin Fei reached for a pastry, "the victims were all Specialists."

"Those two items weren't coincidences either," Nian Jueming, back from boiling water, added. "The Doctor saw at the scene, hard to judge if the ornament was normally placed, but think about it: in a car crash, the front end is crushed, but an ornament on the dashboard in front of the driver's seat remains intact? And that backpack was even weirder and more deliberate. It's not like the killer grabbed it and ran off with it, someone specifically placed it at the scene where the killer committed suicide."

This sentence left Zhang Huaiyu somewhat baffled.

"We suspect there is a mysterious 'Third Party' orchestrating things behind these cases, deliberately using homicides and media reports to convey information related to Specialists and the Infinity Symbol."

"Third Party" - what a remarkably concise and straightforward name.

"Among all this, there might even be someone who can manipulate minds, drive killers to risk their lives or commit suicide, a true murderer: an 'Infinity Killer.'"

Now that killer title had some "flavor" to it.

Zhang Huaiyu was silent for a few seconds, then insisted on clarifying what he didn't understand: "I don't get it. What do you mean someone deliberately placed the backpack in advance? The victim's backpack was deliberately moved to the killer's sui-cide scene?"

"The Doctor saw it. The killer originally only took valuables and threw the bag away at the entrance of the previous alley before running off. But the backpack was suddenly retrieved by someone and moved to the location of the killer's sui-cide. Calculating by time and route, it's impossible that the killer doubled back to get it. We have no idea who moved it."

Zhang Huaiyu still didn't understand. What did "the Doctor saw it" mean? Retrieved by whom? How was it moved to the scene? Although he had countless questions burning inside, he ultimately chose to nod. "If the Doctor says so, there must be a reason."

*

Huh? For a moment, varying degrees of question marks popped up in the minds of the other three.

So when our team leader says it, it doesn't make sense? Nian Jueming thought.

He's already met Dr. Zhou Ping? When did that happen? Jin Fei thought.

How exactly is the logical connection between "what Zhou Ping says" and "there must be a reason" established? Li Che thought.

"Wait a second!" Zhang Huaiyu suddenly asked. "Didn't you say the Doctor is the team's forensic doctor? It's one thing for him to go to crime scenes, but he also went chasing after a robber?"

"Ah, that wasn't exactly chasing, plus he kind of counts as trace analysis too, in a way..." Nian Jueming faltered, hesitating before glancing at Li Che.

Li Che, however, was decisive. He brewed tea using the freshly boiled water, which was now at just the right temperature.

"Because the Doctor is also a Specialist."